


MONSTER

by Lil_Lola_Blue



Series: The Force United [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Lives, F/M, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren Redemption, Mos Eisley, Multi, Redeemed Ben Solo, Reylo - Freeform, Smuggler Ben Solo, Smuggler Han Solo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:55:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22422190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lil_Lola_Blue/pseuds/Lil_Lola_Blue
Summary: You say you want the Revolution that Kylo Ren promised in Snoke's throne room?  So does he. Soon, everyone who thought they were playing checkers with a child in a mask is about to find out they've been playing chess with a monster of power. Because Kylo Ren has a secret weapon. Ben Solo, formerly just a hotshot flyboy and dashing pirate has become an angry man who wants a Revolution. It's the only thing that the two men living in one head have in common. Besides the love of a woman Ben met in a cantina on Jakku, long before Kylo encountered her in an interrogation room. Will Rey join Ren and Ben in lighting the spark that sets the Galaxy aflame? It's time to let old things die. To kill them, if you must. It's time for a Revolution. (AUTHOR'S NOTE: The non-con is not part of the Reylo ship. It's something that happens to Ben/Kylo before he and Rey meet.)
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: The Force United [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1613593
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	1. HUNGRY PEOPLE FEAST

**Author's Note:**

> You know what I liked about The Last Jedi, O Best Beloved? The radical idea and love of a woman that made Kylo Ren kill his wicked master and become his own man. You know what I thought when he unmasked himself in the Force Awakens and Rey looked so upset? So shocked? These people know each other, in another life. You know what I thought when I saw what had become of Luke Skywalker? This man needs to find himself again. This is that story.

**I: HUNGRY PEOPLE FEAST**

**Jakku **

Standing outside the cantina, freshly bathed, and dressed in clean clothes, Rey pushed a piece of her hair away from her face.

She wasn’t used to wearing it down, but, this evening she was a woman in search of a man’s company.

And not just any man’s.

She was looking for a flyboy.

Or a pirate.

Perhaps a rogue.

Maybe a scoundrel.

They were fun while they lasted, and they promised you the stars, but once they left for them?

They left you with nothing.

Rey had loved a flyboy, once, when she was only 13 or 14 and he must have been close to thirty.

That was the man who had lost her both her guardian and her home, and it had hurt to be tossed out into the desert with nothing but the stars he had dissapperaed into to guide her.

That seemed like a lifetime ago, though, and in the intervening years?

Rey had wised the fuck up.

The men she liked were good for only one thing, and that was fine with her, because Rey didn’t need them for more than a good time, anymore.

She could look after herself, now.

Some people thought she went looking at the cantina because she was looking for a man to give her a handout, but that wasn’t true.

She was just looking for a man's company.

When she felt like she needed it, she went to find it.

Rey went to the cantina on a scorching hot evening, looking for said company.

And there was one of the biggest men she had ever seen.

Sitting on the barstool, his long legs in Corellian pilot’s pants touched the floor, and his broad shoulders strained at the seams of his black pilot’s shirt.

It was cooler in the cantina, the cooling unit was sort of working, but his black pilot’s vest was still folded on the bar beside him.

Standing up, he would have been close to six and a half feet tall.

He was eating a serving bowl of what looked like nerf fried rice with a serving spoon, and there was a pitcher of beer and a pitcher of blue milk sitting beside them.

The big man had shaggy, thick, wavy black hair that looked like he needed a haircut but didn’t care, and a black goatee and moustache.

His face was angular, and he had big ears and a big nose, but they looked good on him.

An unconventionally handsome man, with dark, ancient eyes, and full lips.

He turned to her and smiled.

“Are you hungry for me, or the food, Rebel Girl?” he asked

Rey realised she was carrying the old blast helmet she used to keep the sun off her head and her face.

She slammed it down on the bar and hopped up on the barstool beside him.

“You don’t mince words, do you, Flyboy?”

He smirked, and shrugged a little.

“I like hungry girls.”

He looked at her, closely.

“You aren’t much more than a girl, are you? Are you even old enough for me to talk to you?”

“I am 18. I have been old enough to talk to you for two years, flyboy. And you don’t exactly look like an old man.”

“I’m 28.”

“See? You’re not even thirty, yet. And I've been on my own in the world since I was 14, so nobody’s going to come in with a blaster and blow you off the barstool for talking to me.”

Rey was playing it cool, but she really was hungry.

The sight and smell of real food made her stomach growl.

“You’re a scavenger and you live on portions older than both of us, huh?”

“So?”

“So, let me get you some real food. I don’t feel right, just sitting in front of you, eating like a Wookiee.”

The big Flyboy nodded to the Rodian behind the bar, and he soon brought Rey a human sized portion of food, milk, and beer.

“You do eat like a Wookiee.” She told him.

After she cleaned her plate and gulped the milk.

“So do you, Rebel Girl.”

“I have a name. It’s Rey.”

“Nice to meet you, Rey. I’m Ben.”

He didn’t ask her 'Rey What?’

And didn’t tell her his last name.

He didn’t pry, he wasn’t pushy, and he wasn’t a lying cocky prick.

Rey decided she was going home with this one.

Or at least out back.

She was casually looking in the area of his blaster belt when she saw it wasn’t a blaster riding on his slim hip.

“Is that a lightsaber, on your blaster belt?”

“Don’t touch it.”

“I wasn’t. Where did you get a lightsaber?”

“I made it. Before it burned, I was at the Jedi Temple.”

“You’re no Jedi, though. Weren’t you any good at it?”

He laughed.

“I was too good. I scared the fuck out of everybody. But I got kicked out for breaking my vow of chastity. Several times.”

He wasn’t bragging.

Or trying to get sympathy.

It was just what he did.

“I wish I could have gone.”

“No, you don’t. They take all the joy out of your natural Force abilities.”

“How did you know I had any?”

“I can feel it. I could feel it when you came into the cantina. It’s OK. I won’t tell anyone you’re passing for normal. You don’t deserve to end up a slave to the Jedi, or the Sith. Still hungry?”

“Yes.”

“Order some more. Whatever you want.”

***

They stayed until the cantina closed.

He wasn’t staying at the cantina where he was sure to get robbed; Ben was smart enough to have hired a flat.

He didn’t give her a lot of tired cliches, or try to be funny, or gloat because he knew she was coming with him.

They just walked a block or two to the flat.

And it was nice that he held her hand.

When they were at the door to the flat, though, right after Ben unlocked it?

He leaned over and whispered in her ear.

“Are you still hungry, Little Rebel Girl?”

His deep voice rumbled up from his chest in a growl of naked, shameless desire.

Rey knew there was a fire in her, a fire that even the baddest of bad men sometimes shrunk from, and few could dim.

None of them had put it out, yet.

That, however, was the voice of the man who could burn her down.

Ben opened the door.

He waited for her to go in, first.

Rey felt just a little scared, all the sudden.

Like she was walking into the lair of a monster who was going to keep her prisoner for a hundred years.

Or maybe just devour her.

She went, anyway.

Because she had been searching the stars for him for what seemed like forever.

And finally?

Had she found the Beast?

***

There wasn’t any talking.

Good, because Rey didn’t feel like talking.

Hungry people don’t want to talk.

They want to feast.

Ben locked the door behind them and then she was against the wall and he was kissing her.

Then he was taking off his shirt and throwing it aside.

Rey started unwinding her clothes, and when they were naked, Ben kissed her again, and they both stumbled over something in the dark.

Rey fell against the wall and found the light.

Ben had fallen over the arm of an ancient, overstuffed sofa.

She laughed.

And he laughed, too, and reached out for her with his long arms, pulling her onto the old couch with him.

Ben rolled her over so he was on top of her, and it felt good, his long, heavy body stretched over hers.

“Are you clean? Do you have an implant? I'll know if you’re lying, Rebel Girl.”

“I have an implant. And I’m clean, alright. Because I don’t let flyboys like you ride me, bareback.”

“But you’re going to let me do it, aren’t you? Why?”

He was snarling at her, again, and his dark, ancient eyes were full of hellfire.

“Because I'd know if you were lying.”

Ben looked at her, and laughed, and while he was still laughing, he put his hand between their bodies, and got his cock into her.

Rey gasped.

Ben was looking down at her, intently.

“You’re a very hungry Little Rebel Girl, aren’t you? Always going into strange rooms with strange men who disappoint you, in the end. It’s a good thing for you I’m not a man. I’m a monster.”

And some wild spirit seemed to possess this man who said he was a monster because he started riding her hard, so hard that the sofa scraped across the floor a little with his every thrust.

Like he was trying to break through the tight knot of her frustration; like he understood she didn’t want it nicely; it had been too long for nicely.

She wanted it hard, she needed to come hard, and Ben knew what she wanted.

He gave it to her hard, with her swearing through gritted teeth and him grunting and the couch scraping, and when she did come, it was both hard and fast, like a punch in the guts, except it was pleasure that spread through her belly, and not pain.

A sharp cry escaped her, and her body relaxed into the cushions.

Ben pulled out of her, though he hadn’t come, yet, and he put her legs around his shoulders.

Hungry people don’t ask.

They feast.

The monster was full of red hellfire, and he breathed it from his mouth into her body, setting her aflame.

From some distant place of pleasure, Rey heard herself screaming for Ben to, stop, but he wouldn’t, and just at the moment she broke into another orgasm, he was inside her again.

She pounded on his broad back, howling.

“No, no, no, it’s too much! It's too good!”

Nonsense words that she hoped he wouldn’t listen to, that Ben would listen to the way she was holding him tight with her arms and her legs around him.

That’s what he listened to.

The frequency of the snarls and grunts coming from this wild raging bull of a man rampaging astride her came closer together, and louder. It wasn’t so much that he waited for her to come again, because she hadn't stopped coming, it was more that he had to.

Ben pounded his fist on the arm of the sofa behind her, and arched his head and his chest back, and he bellowed, wordlessly.

The couch moved six inches, Rey had another of those gut punch orgasms and Ben came his lot, thunderously.

He rolled off her, onto the floor, panting, his strong, smooth, milk-white body beaded all over with sweat.

He wasn’t very hairy, but he was still quite a man.

“You made me fucking work for that, you little monster! You’re an animal, Rebel Girl!”

He sat up, grinning, goofily.

“After I catch my breath, we'll go find the bed.”

***

Around four in the morning, Rey slid out from under Ben's arm, and went to the bedroom door.

She hated to leave the big man in the big bed.

They had made love twice more before Ben fell asleep, majestically snoring.

Those two times, he had taken his time, and given her everything she wanted, everything she needed and for the first time in her hungry life she felt full and well-fucked and satisfied.

She had slept, too.

Rey looked back at Ben and felt sad and wistful and sorry.

Emotions she hadn’t connected with leaving a man’s room for a long time.

Rey knew that Ben was the best she’d ever had and he was probably the best she would ever have, and every other man from here on out would just be the rest.

She had taken the monster's red hellfire, even into her womb, and it would burn her in flesh, forever.

Rey shook that thought off.

But she liked Ben, she really did, and whether he was rude in the morning, or polite and gentlemanly?

Goodbye would hurt, this time.

And Rey didn’t have a place in her life for that.

She was almost to the bedroom door when he room filled with light.

“Hey! Where do you think you're going?”

He moved fast, for such a big man; Ben was blocking the door.

“Don’t be polite, Ben. I know how this works. I know you’ll want me to leave in the morning, so I’ll just go now.”

She saw anger in his eyes.

“Did I fuck you like I wanted you to leave me?” he demanded.

“You all leave me. Whether it’s two days or two weeks, you all fly away, and even if you do come back, you never come back to me.” She retorted.

Rey knew she sounded hard and tough, and she was making it sound like she fucked everybody, like she’d had hundreds of men.

Even though she didn’t.

And she hadn’t.

But getting hard and being tough was the way she knew to survive.

“So that’s what happened to you. You fell in love with some cheap, two-bit flyboy who promised you the stars and left you in the sand to starve. And you couldn’t go home again, he wrecked that for you, too, huh? Some men can be so cruel, when you’re weak, and you’re helpless. Trust me. I know.”

Rey felt wounded.

Stabbed through like he had ignited his lightsaber in her guts.

Ben had seen right through her.

“But you didn’t let him break you, did you, Rebel Girl?”

“No. I’ll never let anyone break me.”

“Me neither. I’m tough as leather, diamond-hard and just as rare. And I am going to be on Jakku for at least two weeks. So are you. Unless you lied about being alone in the world.” He told her.

“I didn’t.”

“Then stay with me. And come back to bed.”

He held out his hand to her.

He was angry that she wanted to leave him; he was used to people leaving him, but he didn’t like it.

How bad could it be?

Maybe he really was different.

He seemed to be

Rey took his hand, and Ben picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.

“Trying to sneak out on me?”

She laughed when he put her back in the bed.

“No! I thought you would throw me out in the morning. I have my pride, you know.”

“Me? Throw you out? A goofy-looking pirate, a son of a pirate, like me?”

“You’re not goofy looking.”

“You need your eyes fixed. I am a big, ugly, weird goof. I know me better than you do. And everybody told me so, for the first two decades of my life.”

“You are not. But I know how you feel. They used to make fun of me because I wore old clothes and my parents left me.”

“They didn’t die? They just left you? I won’t leave you, Rey. Well, not forever. I’ll come back.”

“You just met me, Ben.”

“Yeah, well, I’m one of those idiots you hear about who’s a sucker for a tough girl who needs an even break. Besides, the Force is strong with you. Like it is with me. That binds people like us together. And it can happen as soon as we meet.”

“Has it ever happened to you before? With a woman?”

“Well, yeah. But she was five at the time, and I was six. Her stepdad and my godfather are both Wookiees, from the same clan. We were both weird kids with no friends, and they figured we might get along. I was sitting out on the balcony where I couldn’t hear my parents going through their endless cycle of fighting in the kitchen and fucking in the bedroom. I was playing Blow Up the Death Star. But I could move my toy X-Wings and TIE Fighters around without having to touch them. And I didn’t need a string to hang my Death Star in midair. The Wook, her name is Kallaan but I call her the Wook, she came out and sat with me. And she said, I’ll be the Rebels, you be the Empire. Without opening her mouth. And she started moving my X-Wings around. And when she got one close to my toy Death Star. She blew it up. We’ve been best friends ever since.”

“Where is this Kallaan now?”

Ben corrected Rey’s pronunciation of the Wookiee name.

“She’s in Anchorhead, where I live, working on my freighter. She’s my Mechanic. And like most flyboys the only thing I possess that’s as important to me as my cock and my weapon is my ship.”

Rey laughed.

“Do you need a good scavenger, Ben?”

“Not on this trip. I’m not here for scrap. But next time? Yeah, I’ll need somebody who knows what’s garbage and what’s good. I’m not going to lie to you, Rey. I’m not the good guy. But I’m loyal, and my word is good as Besker steel. I promise, Rey. I swear, by my true Master in the Force. I won’t leave you. You’re going to think I’m a big nerfshitter, now, but I’ve been looking for you for a long time. I just didn’t know who you were, or where you were. Now that I’ve found you? I’m not going to just leave you in the desert to rot.”

Rey was surprised by the sudden intensity of Ben's promise.

_Somebody he loves, somebody he trusted betrayed him._

_One of his own parents, maybe._

_This man understands my pain, because he shares it._

And her insight.

Maybe it was the Force.

Maybe it had been, all these years.

“And I promise I will never betray you, Ben.”

“I believe you. I’ll tell you what, so you know I’m not just a nerfshitter? I’ll tell you my last name, too. Solo. Do you know your last name?”

“No.”

“Then I'll have to help you find one.”

“Wait? You’re Ben Solo? And that’s The Mechanic you were telling me about? You’re really Ben Solo?” Rey asked.

“Whatever you’ve heard about me? It’s probably true.”

Ben Solo.

Rey blushed, a little.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. I believe you, Ben. Can you turn the light out? I’m very tired.”

Ben yawned.

“Me too. But I won’t be, in the morning.”

They both fell asleep, and slept for a long time.

***

Ben was gone for three months, total.

He sent her letters, to the trading post.

She sent him letters, to an address in Anchorhead, where he lived.

The toughest town on the Outer Rim, of course.

Rey started to worry when two weeks went by with no letter.

She got a message, about him at the Trading Post.

They told her the message came at the same time every day.

“This is the Mechanic, calling for Rey the Rebel Girl. I got a message for you, from Ben Solo.”

The voice was a woman’s, but it was tough, streetwise, and staccato, like the comment made by a bolt of plasma shooting out of the business end of a blaster.

“This is Rey.”

“You ain’t so easy to find. When do you eat, every couple of days? Never mind. Ben wired you you some money. If that prick at the trading post don’t give it to you, you tell me, now. I’ll be there in a few hours, and it’s his ass.”

“I got the money, I’m giving it to her, Mechanic.”

“You better. Now shut the fuck up. And mind your won fuckin' business, nerf herder. Anyway, Rey? Ben’s laid up. He got into some shit, and broke a couple of his ribs and got a lung infection. He’s getting better, though. He’ll see you in two weeks. If you run out of dough, call back. From the cantina. The Rodian knows the frequency. Don’t worry about Ben.”

“What did the doctors say? What about the medical droids?”

“Ben don’t like doctors. I’m taking care of him. It’s alright, I went to the Jedi Temple, too. I studied healing. I wanted to learn something that would be fuckin’ useful. You’ll see him in two weeks. Over and out.”

Rey suspected she was being lied to.

But, in two weeks time,

When Rey went to trade her loot for food?

Ben was waiting for her.

In his black pilot’s shirt and vest, and his black Corellian pilot’s pants, with his blaster belt he wore a lightsaber and a blaster on.

Knowing he looked better than a whole case of portions.

“She’s not going to need that slop. Come here, Rebel Girl.”

Ben called her Rebel Girl because when he met her, she still had her X-Wing helmet.

She had sold it, since.

It had reminded her of him.

“Ben! You came back! How did you get hurt?”

“Lets go back to the flat. And I’ll tell you.”

The funny thing was?

He did.

“I’m going to tell you the truth, Rey. I’m not Ben Solo all the time. I have another life. My mother is Princess Leia Organa. The daughter of Darth Vader. My grandfather is my true Master, in the Force. As both Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker. I have trained to be a Jedi, and a Sith, but in my heart I am something else. Something new. Something revolutionary. When I am not being Ben Solo, I am of the Knights of Ren. I am their leader. Kylo Ren.”

“Holy Mother Force, Ben! You are Kylo Ren?”

“Yeah. I am the man in the black mask. And whatever you heard about me? It’s probably true. I was wounded in battle. I’m the guy who does what the Mechanic calls the Imperial Dirty Work. But, just like my grandfather, who was Anakin Skywalker, and became Darth Vader, only to become Anakin Skywalker, again? Someday, when my journey is complete and the war is over? I will be Ben Solo, all the time, again. But no one here can know that Kylo Ren and Ben Solo are the same man. You promised not to betray me, Rey. I need you. And Kylo Ren needs you.”

“I’ll keep it. But what would you both need me for?”

“Besides the obvious?”

Rey blushed.

“Yes, Ben. Besides that.”

“You’re going to help us start the Revolution, Little Rebel Girl.”


	2. RUTHLESS F***ING PIRATES

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rey becomes a part of the most dysfunctional family in the Galaxy, Kylo ends up on the wrong end of his mask, and Han has an appointment with destiny.

**II: RUTHLESS FUCKING PIRATES**

“Look, I’d like to help you kids, but I got a real problem with those goddamn rathtars.” Han was saying.

“Why are you transporting rathtars?” Finn asked.

“They’re supposed to go to Tattoine. To Jobi the Hutt. Jabba’s son. They were supposed to be there a month ago. I heard all about it, at the top of Ben’s lungs. He screamed, and screamed and said he’d kill you if you double-crossed him, and then he broke the radio. Have you seen him, lately? I haven’t seen him for over six months. He can’t get away. Do you ever see him or do you just talk on the radio? " Rey asked Han.

“Ben who?” Finn asked.

Han pointed his finger in Finn’s face.

All the sudden, he looked terribly upset.

“Shut up, Finn. Chewie, entertain this kid. Get him a ride to Arkanis. As for you, sweetheart? Walk with me.”

Han took Rey aside.

“Are you Rebel Girl?”

“Yes. Does Ben talk about me?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Why is your face red, Han?”

“Because when the kid gets drunk, he opens his mouth and his guts fall out. Yeah, he talks about you. How much do you know?’

“Han, I know everything! I know Kylo Ren is Ben Solo. I know he gave you a First Order Captain’s Medal and you two have a deal. You and Ben do your business on the Outer Rim, and you don’t get involved in his Imperial dealings, and he sees to it your free pass keeps working. I've known Ben for almost two years. But there’s getting to be less of Ben Solo and more of Kylo Ren. And neither one of them are too happy with you. Han, you should dump those rathtars, send Ben back his Captain’s Medal and do something else. Ben thinks you’re double dealing with him. I think he’s really going to kill you.”

“I know. Especially if this rathtar deal goes sideways. But that prick, Jobi, he’s talking about not paying us. He says the Solos owe him for his slimy piece of worm ridden filth father. That fucking…what does Ben call him?”

“Big fat tub of greasy guts?”

“Yeah. That’s Jabba’s rotten kid, alright. But back to my rotten kid. Rey, listen to me. Run away. Run away with Finn. Hell, run away with any man. Forget Ben. I know he hasn’t made that easy for you, but this Galaxy is full of hotshot flyboys with big swinging dicks who can screw you out of your socks. I can’t just get out of business with Ben. I stick with him because I have to. I’m his father, and I love the spoiled little shit even though he's become a monster. You don’t have to.”

“I love him, too, Han. I can’t abandon him. I won’t. I promised him I’d never betray him. I gave him my word.”

“Did he give you his?”

“He swore on his true Master.”

“Fuck! What the hell is wrong with that kid? Getting you involved in all this shit? He’s crazy, Rey. Trust me, I know all about his plan. And it’s crazy. They, aw hell, Rey! I can’t hardly talk about it.”

Han stopped talking.

His voice became choked with anger.

Rey probed, gently at his mind, and heard Ben screaming from inside his father’s memory.

She didn't want to know

Han found his words.

“When those Sith bastards were training him to be evil? They hurt Ben, Rey. Bad. They really hurt him, hurt him in ways a man can never get over. It woulda killed most people. Most people woulda just rolled over and died. But Ben’s a tough kid. It didn’t kill him. But it drove him crazy. He’s crazy with rage, and pain and his desire for revenge. Those Imperials, and even the Jedi? They made a mistake. They crossed a Solo. You don’t get to do that and live happily ever the fuck after. You cross Ben Solo, you die. End of story. Which means Ben won’t be satisfied until he’s got one half of the galaxy to kill the other, and he’s done a lot of that killing, himself. He’s my son, and sure, he has his good points, but both the guys Ben is are a real bad guy. He’s a Sith and a ruthless fucking pirate, and unless he’s ankles-deep in the blood of his enemies, rolling in money and has a line of girls waiting to get on their knees for him? He’s not happy. I think the kid does love you, but what kind of woman wants to be loved by a ruthless fucking pirate?”

“General Leia Organa-Solo?”

“You see how well that worked out. We created a monster.”

“You don’t really think he’s a monster, do you, Han?”

“You do, kid. That’s why you’re so in love with him, huh? Oh well. I tried. Welcome to the family, kiddo. I’m real sorry you picked this one.”

“That’s OK, Han. I have no family. So I can’t complain.”

***

“Where am I?”

_It’s obvious where I am. I’m alone in an interrogation room with a hideous monster, a man so hideous and inhuman, he has to wear a mask._

“You are my guest.”

“Where are the others?”

_Dead, I’ll bet._

_Maybe it’ll be worse for me._

_Maybe he’s just enough of a man to…gods, how far are my legs manacled apart?_

“You mean the murderers, traitors and thieves you call friends? I have no idea. You still want to kill me?”

_He sounds happy about it._

_But is he even a man, under that mask?_

_I had better find out._

_In case he’s thinking about doing something to me._

_I’m helpless._

_He could do anything to me._

“That’s what happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.”

_There is something about him; something that makes me feel like…my life has been a long journey, leading to this room._

_This day._

_This…?_

_Fate?_

_I don’t want this to be my fate._

He took his mask off.

“You’ve been hunted by a creature in a mask for years. And it never bothered you before. What the hell are you and the Old Man doing here?”

Rey couldn’t believe it.

It was Ben.

And he was furious.

That was OK.

So was Rey.

“You lying bastard! You never told me that Kylo Ren of the Knights of Ren was the Dark Lord Vader of his generation!”

“What did you think I did for the First Order? Held religious services? I told you I was the man in the black mask!”

“I didn’t think you meant it, literally! I will NEVER tell you about that map! And if you try to pick my brain, I will...I will tell ever single First Order henchman I see the truth about you! How you're terrified you are that you’ll never be the man Darth Vader was! You’ll have to kill me to make me stop!”

Ben leaned close to her.

“I can take what I want, Rey. All of it. I can take it right out of your mind. But I won’t. Not when I can get all the information I need from the droid."

"You don't even know where it is. If this is what Kylo Ren does? You're much better at being Ben Solo."

"Wait until I start killing people, again."

"Was that supposed to be funny?"

"You're dancing around the point, Rey! What are you doing here? You, and that son of a bitch my my mother married! Don’t you people understand that I have carefully planned all this out? I don't need your help and I sure as shit don't need his!”

“You need all the help you can get! And your plan sucks, Kylo! If this is part of your plan? It sucks. Hard.” Rey spat.

“Just like you, Little Rebel Girl? You should see the way you’re looking at me."

"That's because I really do want to kill you! Still!"

"And you'll have a long time to think about that wherever you're going when you leave and get my useless backstabbing father out of here! Snoke wants me to kill him! Why do you think I keep him out on the Outer Rim, where Kylo Ren never goes! Do you really think I want to kill my own father? If I have to, because you brought him here, his blood will be on your hands, too! I have to think."

Kylo Ren sat on the floor, with his head in his hands.

"It might work. You stay here and be quiet. I have to find a goddamned blast vest, and talk to the Mechanic!"

He put his mask on and left her there, strapped to the gurney for ten or fifteen minutes, then returned, and took it off, again, putting it in the same place.

Kylo Ren freed her from her restraints, but he put binders on her.

“I’ve got it figured out. I'm putting you and the Old Man in a TIE fighter and you’re leaving. Hopefully to get back to the Falcon and get those rathtars to that big fat tub of guts!”

“I’m not going anywhere! I joined the Resistance, and I’m going to blow up your Death Star planet!”

“It’s called Starkiller Base. Good. Blow it up. I’d like to see you try it.”

“There already is a revolution, Ben. Why don’t you just join us?”

“You really don’t understand, Rey.”

“I really don’t want to!”

“You know what I want to do, Rebel Girl?”

Kylo Ren realized that Rey couldn’t slap him; her hands were bound.

He kissed her.

"If I took your leggings off, would you scream and kick me in the head?"

And Rey thought of a way to escape.

“Ben?”

“Kylo. Don't call me Ben, when I'm not Ben."

“Kylo, are those leather pants?”

He broke into a grin all over his face, and unlocked her from the binders.

Rey made a point to remember that Kylo Ren was as horny as Ben Solo was.

"Yes, they are."

"If I unfastened them for you, would you scream, and kick me in the head?"

"No, I wouldn't."

Ray sank to her knees, and ran one of her hands from Kylo Ren's calf, up to his thigh.

"Have I ever told you that sometimes it makes me come a little, just from sucking your cock?"

His knees began to tremble.

She wasn't lying to him.

It had been a long time, and he was hotter than hellfire in black leather, so Rey decided she would just wait until he popped his cork to whack him over the head with his own mask, and then escape.

After she did it, Rey felt guilty.

She wiped her mouth on her arm and kissed Kylo, quickly, and also tucked his cock back into his pants for him.

"I'm sorry, Kylo. It was good for me, too. But I have to go, now."

***

“Han, we have to hurry!”

“Yeah, I know. How did you get away from Vader, junior?”

Rey chewed her lip.

“What?”

“I made him think we were going to, well, you know. And then I bashed him over the head with his mask, and escaped.”

Han smiled.

“You and Kalla are going to be the best daughters-in-law a guy like me could ever have. Go on. You go ahead.”

“Okay.”

***

Han let them all go ahead of him, because he heard something.

“Hey! Psst! Solo! Over here!”

Han knew who it was, but he was not being addressed, properly.

“Goddamit, Dad, I know you hear me!”

Han let the others go on ahead of him.

He hung back, and walked over the alcove where the maintenance terminal was.

Out of sight of anyone walking by.

An angry swirl of black confronted him.

“What the fuck are you doing here? Are you stabbing me in the back, you pirate son of a bitch?”

Han wasn’t intimidated by any portion of Ben's half-assed Vader act.

“No, I’m trying to save your ass! Your head is bleeding. I can’t believe you fell for it, kid.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve known Rey for two years and this is the first time I ever got a blowjob and a concussion in rapid succession! You find me a man who wouldn't have fallen for that!"

"You got a point there, kid. I think any of us would have fallen for that."

"I must have really pissed her off this time."

"Why? Did she knock you out before you shot your wad?"

"Yeah, sure. Not that one, old man. The girl is a god damn animal. I don't know what her problem is! I told her I was Kylo Ren. I told her I did the Imperial Dirty Work. What did she think I meant?”

“Probably a little less wholesale murder, kid.”

“Why the fuck did you bring her here to rub her nose in it! I was going to ease her into the truth!”

“Oh yeah, kid? How?”

Ben and Han scowled at each other, their angry faces inches from each other.

“It doesn’t matter, now! You already fucked that up for me! Besides you’re supposed to be delivering my rathtars to Jobi the Hutt and getting our money, not fucking up my Imperial business! You’re already two months late!”

“Well, since you brought up the rathtars? It’s a trap. Guess who Jobi wants on the wall of Jabba’s palace? The Solo boys. There’s no money for me there, or you, junior. Just hanging around and being decorative."

“That fat fucking tub of greasy guts! I’ll kill him and everything that moves in his filthy fucking palace!”

“You and what army? Stormtroopers? Sure. Maybe they'll shoot each other and Jobi will laugh himself to death. Meanwhile, he put it all around the Galaxy that we screwed him and now there’s a price on our heads.”

“Not Kylo Ren’s.”

Han jabbed his finger at the air in Ben’s face.

“I don’t want to hear that shit! You’re Ben Solo, not Kylo fucking Ren! That even sounds like a bullshit name! You wanna know why I'm here? I’m here because your mother wants you to come home. She's tired of this Imperial nerfshit and so am I. But I guess your girl likes the outfit, so you can save it and put on the Imperial Act for Rey at bedtime. And I heard your plan. Many times. I don’t understand it, and after what these rat fuck pig bastards did to you? I don't know why you keep coming back!"

“Well Mom just got you killed! And I'll have to do it! Not that I don’t feel like killing you, just now! When are you going to stop letting me down? Not that it matters, because now the Hutts will kill us both! Or keep us as wall hangings. If you hadn’t been late on delivery, this would never have happened! You know, it’s times like this I really hate you, Old Man!”

“Right back at you, you spoiled little prick!”

Kylo Ren shoved something at his father.

Han looked in his hands.

“An Imperial blast vest? What, I’m facing a firing squad?”

“You’re just lucky that I can think fast! Take off your shirt and your jacket and put this blast vest on under them. Then we're going to go out there on that catwalk, and have a theatrical confrontation, and I’m going to shove this lightsaber right through your tough old hide. The blast vest should stop it, but you’ll still get burned. Then you stagger back, look shocked, and fall into the chasm. Make it look good, because it’s your ass. Everybody on both sides needs to think you are dead. Kalla’s waiting out of sight, in the chasm, in my TIE fighter. Get yourself out of here in a big fucking hurry. And lay low until the war is over. If you don’t get killed? Don’t tell me. It’s better if even I don’t know you’re dead.”

“Are you crazy, Ben?”

Han took off his shirt and jacket.

“Don’t do that in front of Rey.”

“Why? Still no chest hair, kid?”

“Fuck you, old man."

“Well, maybe by the time you’re 35 or 40, huh?”

Han was putting the blast vest on.

“And you think this plan is a better idea than blowing the whole shithouse up and leaving on the Falcon with me and Chewie and Rey?”

“This isn’t the whole shithouse! This piddling dump of a giant fucking Death Star isn’t even close to being the whole shithouse! When I make the whole shithouse go up in flames? You’ll know.”

“No, Ben, you'll know. That old bastard Sith, Snoke is just using you! When he’s done with you? He'll either kill you or throw you away.” Han told him.

“I know that? Did you ever listen to my plan?"

"Why don't you give me the short version."

“The Jedi crossed me. I'm taking them all out, and anybody who sides with them? Too fucking bad. But the Sith? They double crossed me. I'm going to kill them all. Like fucking rats."

“Well, I like the second half of your plan. It sounds good to me. Come with me, and I’ll help you kill ‘em all. Listen, Ben, you better think this crazy shit over. If Rey sees you killing me, how do you figure you’re ever going to get her pants off, again?

“Like I said, you've really fucked things up for me. But she'll get over it. I told you, she’s an animal. And she likes bad guys.”

“Oh, I get it. And she wants you because you're the big bad flyboy from the Dark Side, with the black mask on. So if you do something unforgivable in front of her?”

Han smirked.

Ben grinned.

“Great. So me and half the Galaxy has to die so you can prove you’re a big man and get the girl of your dreams? Well, good luck, Vader junior.”

Han put his shirt and jacket back on.

“I got the vest on. Try not to enjoy killing me, too much.”

“Try not to die, you pirate son of a bitch. Here we go.”

“Hey, Ben? Good luck with your Revolution. And do your Old Man a favor? Burn it all down. You make sure the Imperial shithouse goes up in flames so nobody can ever build it up, again.”

For a minute, Kylo Ren went under, and Han was talking to his son, Ben again.

“I will, Dad. And wherever you end up? When the time comes? I want you to come back, dead or alive, and help me throw rocket furl on the fire."

***

Rey had promised Ben that she would never betray him.

And he promised he would never leave her.

But they had never promised not to try and kill each other with lightsabers.

Which Rey was doing a really good job of for someone who had never used one, before.

Kylo was in awe of her raw talent with the Force.

He spoke to her over their crossed lightsabers.

“Rey, you need a teacher. I can show you the ways of the Force. The New Path. My grandfather’s path.”

“Your mind is too full of hate to even understand it!”

And then as they continued to fight.

She was enraged, attacking him with all her strength.

All the strength of the Force that flowed through her.

It was hard for Kylo Ren, just to defend himself.

“The old pirate is dead. The Resistance are strangers to you, and soon they’ll be strangers who are also dead. And what do you have to go back to on Jakku? Stay with me. You know you want to.”

“You don’t care that I destroyed your precious Starkiller Base?”

Kylo Ren laughed, parrying one of her desperate thrusts.

“You saved me the trouble of having to do it myself. I was right about you, killer. You are the woman I need to help me make my Revolution.”

Rey battled back, furiously, so furiously that she had the young Sith at her mercy.

She could have killed him.

But she had other ideas.

Rey swung Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber and slashed it across his grandson's flesh

She could smell him burning.

It was time to give the monster back some of his own hellfire.

“Kylo Ren, Ben Solo? You are a monster! Let me set a fire in your flesh, so everyone who sees your face will know what you are!"

He fell back into the snow, gasping in pain and surprise.

“I’m leaving you this time! Leaving you bleeding in the snow! The next time we meet, in person? You'rte going to have to pick one! Ben Solo, or Kylo Ren. And you had better be able to explain just what this Revolution is. Or I’ll send your damned soul straight to hell and follow after you, so we can duel in Hell, and burn together, Kylo Ren! Forever!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Rey just leaves him, bleeding in the snow? How will they pick up, on Ahch-To, after the events of this chapter? And just what is Luke Skywalker going to make of all this?


	3. JOURNEYS END IN LOVERS MEETING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This is the Chapter where the Non-con/Rape that has happened to Kylo Ren comes to light. It's not a very large part of the chapter, so it's possible to read around it if this is a trigger for you. You'll see it coming, just skip down to the next jump.
> 
> In which Ahch-To proves to be the unlikely rock upon which the Revolution, in a small part, begins.

**CHAPTER THREE: JOURNEYS END IN LOVERS MEETING.**

“He wants to start a Revolution?” Luke asked Rey.

“That’s what he told me. I think that’s what he meant by finishing what Vader started. Ben said though he has been trained as a Jedi and a Sith, he was something else in his heart. He follows the New Path, set out by his true Master, his grandfather who is both Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader. But Han said that Ben was too full of rage to follow anything but his own desire for vengeance. Anakin was your father, Master Luke. Have you heard of this New Path?”

Luke sighed.

“Yes. I have. There was a prophecy that my father would bring a balance to the Force. He has devised a New Path he calls the Force United. My sister follows it. Although Leia doesn’t realise that’s what she’s doing. She doesn’t like rules. The Mechanic, Kallaan Anglethorn? Your rival?”

“Kalla and I aren’t rivals. Ben’s two men, and neither of them are easy to love. He needs us both, and Kalla and I need to lean on each other.” Rey interrupted.

Luke made no comment on that.

“Your friend, Kalla? She is my father’s student. He has been her Master since she was a child. She understands his teaching. I do, too, but I fear them. Kalla fears nothing.”

Luke smiled.

The Mechanic had feelings for him.

She had told him so, and had attempted, while she was his student, to seduce him.

Sometimes, he could still see her in his mind's eye, naked except for her long, wavy violet purple hair that hung to her hip.

Of course he had put a blanket over her shoulders and sent her on her way

“Master Luke?”

“Yes? Yes, I was... considering. And Ben? Han was right. Ben misunderstands Father's teaching. His mind is clouded by his rage and his pain. His desire for vengeance. And Snoke takes advantage of all this, and uses it for his own ends. Now I see, Rey. Now I understand.”

“But is that good or bad, Master Luke? Can he do it?”

“Bring balance to the Force with slaughter? Destruction? That is Snoke’s way. Ben must find his own way back to the path.”

“Can I help him?”

“Not yet. You are not ready. And even when you are ready? You may fail. But I know you won’t accept failure. How long has it been since you saw him? Or spoke to him?”

Rey didn’t know how to answer that.

It had been a few months she was on Ahch-To.

Since she had left Ben bleeding in the snow.

But recently?

Things had changed.

***

Rey stalked over the dark hills of Ahch-To.

“Ben, I really don’t feel like doing this, right now.”

“Neither do I.”

She stopped walking.

Ben wasn’t wearing anything but his leather pants.

Rey scowled, rolling her eyes.

“Can’t you put on a towel, or something? This is beneath you.”

“You’ve seen it. And he didn’t tell you everything.”

“Master Luke told me enough. You burned the Jedi Temple.”

“Did he tell you that after he dismissed both my roommates, one after the other, he tried to cut off my head while I was sleeping?”

Rey couldn’t believe it.

“You’re lying.”

“I would never lie to you.”

“No. But you tell me the truth in a very selective manner! Like when you told me you were Kylo Ren. You made it sound like you were some kind of minor functionary! Not Snoke’s Henchman-in-Chief, his Darth Vader!”

“You want to fight? To waste this connection, on a fight?”

“Yes! I never know what the real reason is that you do anything. Or the whole truth of a word you say!”

“So you are calling me a liar?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want that! Not a thief and a murderous warlord like you! You’re a liar, and a murderer and you've always got some fucking excuse for the latest horrible thing you’ve done! Why can’t you just tell me the fucking truth!”

Ben broke something.

And he roared in rage.

“Nobody’s ever been in your head but me, have they? And when you tell me to get out, I go, don’t I?”

Rey nodded.

“What about in your ass? Did any of your previous lovers ever stick his cock up your ass? I'll bet they didn’t. Because you don’t like it. The first time I ever got behind you, even though now we both know you like getting fucked on all fours, you thought I was going to stick it up your ass, and you told me, no, Ben, no, you’re too big, you’ll hurt me. And I won’t like it that way. So, I didn’t do it, did I? The truth is, I was never after your asshole, because guess what, honey? I know just how much it hurts!”

Ben punched the wall.

“You know how I know? I’ve had a gang of six Imperials up my ass, one after the other, and the sons of bitches fucked me bloody, and never wiped their Imperial cocks off before they slapped them into my mouth! Or you know, for a little variety in their sick sex lives, they’d fuck me in my mouth and my ass at the same time, while the ones who weren’t on me just couldn’t wait to be the next to ride! Not just once, either! I never knew when they were coming back to do it again, but I knew, just I knew they would be back! Until I killed them! Can you imagine the pain? The humiliation? And what if felt like even after they left me? Crumpled in a ball on the floor, bloody and crying and retching? You don’t know. You can’t even imagine. But what Snoke does to my mind, every minute of every day, and has, since I burned the Jedi Temple? It’s just as bad! I killed every one of those twisted bastards, except the worst of them, and being Kylo fucking Ren means I’ll never have another man on my back unless I want it, and you know what? I don’t! Just killing Snoke means I won’t get my mind fucked, anymore. So until he’s dead? I’m going to have to keep lying to you! So he doesn’t find you in my mind and come after you and rape your mind, too, the same way those rat fuck pig bastards raped my poor, starved, broken body and just about left me for dead!”

Rey was horrified.

The horror of what Ben had said filled her mind.

He had described it to her in a way that it would.

And it filled her eyes with tears.

It must have been the memory that filled Han's mind with screams.

When Ben gets drunk, he opens his mouth, and his guts fall out.

“It’s so horrible, Ben. Just so horrible. How could…why, Ben? Why did those men do…do that to you? Because they were told to?”

“They did it because they could, that’s why. But yeah, I think they were told to. To break me. Well, I’m not fucking broken, am I? But I broke those Imperial bastards. I shattered them. They all died like miserable, sniveling cowards. Begging me for mercy. And I’ll break Snoke, too. Before he dies? He’s going to learn the same lesson his pals did. You don’t cross Ben Solo. And dead men tell no tales. Do you think I’m lying, now?”

“No, Ben. I don’t.”

“How do you like it when I tell you the fucking truth?”

Rey started to cry.

That stopped Ben’s rage.

She sat on the ground, put her face in her hands, and cried.

“I shouldn’t have told you that. Are you crying for me, Rey?”

“Yes, Ben. I am. It’s so horrible. What about the last man? Why did you leave him alive?”

“I want him to live long enough to see me undo his life’s work. Don’t cry, Rey. It happened before you met me. There’s nothing you could have done. I’m going to go get some ice for my knuckles. And put on a shirt.”

And he was gone.

***

Rey ran back to the hut.

She very nearly ran into her Master.

“What did he tell you?”

“I’m leaving this place! I was wrong to come here! General Organa-Solo can train me! You tried to kill your own nephew! And do you know what they did to him? The men whose arms you shoved him into?”

Luke closed his eyes and threw his hands in front of him.

“Don’t tell me this.”

“They wanted to show him what evil was. They beat him, and starved him. Tortured him, and made him fight other students to the death. And some of them, men who had been Imperial officers since before Ben was born? They raped him!” Rey shouted.

Luke seemed to fold up on himself.

“No. Oh no!” he said, quietly.

“Yes! Those Imperial bastards, they raped him! Violently! And left him lying, violated, in a pool of blood and…blood and…I saw it, in his memory, as he told me! I can still hear Ben screaming, and crying! He cried out for all of you! For his family! And none of you went to help him! Han couldn’t hear him, but what’s your excuse, Master Luke? And Ben says that having Snoke assault his mind is even just as bad! That’s how he became Kylo Ren. They made him into a monster!”

The lightsaber, Anakin’s lightsaber, was in Rey's hand.

She felt fury raging in her blood, like a drug.

But she extinguished it.

And she began to cry.

It wasn’t the proper thing, to hug a hysterical student, but as it wasn’t proper to try and slaughter one, either?

Luke broke with protocol, and hugged Rey until her tears stopped.

And his, too.

“He was such a funny, sweet, smart little boy. He had this goofy sense of humor. Even when he was at the Temple, him and Kalla? They wanted to be roommates. I wouldn’t allow it and, eventually I had to relent, because they did it all over the school. The two of them were always making trouble, but they were harmless. Ben was quirky, and he was funny and kind. He was always weird in a good way. All the Skywalkers are. Weird. But in a good way. My poor Ben. How could they? How could they put out his light?”

“They didn’t, Master Luke. You just described the Ben I know. The only man who never left me. The man I love. I know he’s still there, because I’ve known him for years. Do you believe me, Master Luke?”

“I want to, Rey. I want to believe you. You go back to the hut, and lie down. It’s good for Ben he doesn’t have to bear his pain, alone, anymore. I have to consider what to do, next. About both of you. We'll start again, in the morning.”

***

Rey sat in Luke's hut.

She had cried, and then she sat there, numbly.

Then she got angry.

And after that she filled with resolve.

To keep her promise to Ben.

“Rey. I put something on.”

She saw Ben, and he was dressed.

Suddenly, she remembered when he took her to Anchorhead, and they were in his giant bed in his apartment, and Ben was lying there, naked, with an empty paper bucket of take out food between them.

He had picked it up, poked two holes in it, stuck it over his head and announced he was a Stormtrooper and she, Rebel Girl was under arrest.

He grabbed a bone from the dumped bucket and pointed it at her.

“PEW! PEWPEWPEW! I missed!”

And they’d had a fake blaster battle that ranged all over the bedroom.

It was the kind of thing that only Ben would do, but it had been a lot of fun.

Same man.

Those things had already happened to him, then, hadn’t they?

And he was the same man.

How could he just let it go, and keep on living?

“Ben, I won’t leave you. I won’t betray you. Terrible things happened to you because people you loved and trusted betrayed you. I won’t become one of them. I wish…I wish I could just touch your hand.”

Rey reached her hand towards him.

Ben took off his glove.

Their hands moved closer together, and when they touched?

Ben was right there, sitting across from her.

He brought her fingers to his lips, and kissed them.

“You taste like rain.”

“Do you think I can kiss you? Do you even want to?”

“I always want to kiss you. Let’s try.”

They leaned in like two scared 13 year olds, slowly, until their lips met.

Same man.

The man she’d been having an affair with on two planets since she was 18.

The only man who ever came back for her.

“Do you know that we haven’t made love for a year, Rey? I need you. I kept coming back for you, because you are my light. You made me believe that someday I could be Ben Solo, again, for good. Not just for a few weeks here and there. I kept all your letters.”

“I have all of yours. I love you, Ben. I don’t want to let you go. Has it been that long? A year?”

Ben moved closer to Rey, and he pulled her into his arms.

This time, they kissed like long lost lovers.

“How is this possible?” Rey asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Ben? Maybe you should take something off.”

“You just told me to put something on. What should I take off?”

“Oh, everything.”

***

Ben held Rey in his arms.

They were both naked, but he wanted to just hold her, for a little while, and feel her body close to his.

Not as enemies, or rivals.

But as lovers.

She rested her head on his chest, and traced her fingers along his scar.

“I cherish that scar. It reminds me of you. Also? It’s an interesting scar, rather than a disfiguring one.” Ben told her

“I will cherish this moment, after our connection is broken.”

“So will I. Holding you like this makes me feel like I’m just an ordinary man. Like we may be able to have a future together.”

“That’s what I want, Ben. Sometimes I don’t even feel like a person, let alone a woman. I feel like a symbol. Or a tool.”

“A weapon in the hands of a destiny you don’t comprehend. Or want? I want to be Ben, again. With you? I can be.”

***

Luke froze.

First, he didn’t even understand by what process that Ben could even be in his hut with Rey, at all.

Then he wasn’t sure how that process allowed for physical contact.

Only then did he register surprise, and embarrassment to find them on the floor of his hut, in each other’s arms.

They were not making love, but unless he broke their connection, they soon would be.

He might have done, had the two of them not been lying there, clinging to each other so desperately.

Then, as a reflex, he shut the door and backed away.

He was going to angrily discover them, but that would create a terrible scene, and drive Rey further from the path.

Also?

Luke understood what it was like to no longer feel like a person, let alone a man, to feel like a tool or a weapon on the hands of a destiny he could not comprehend and did not want.

He wanted to be Luke, again, too.

Leia's sister, Ben's uncle, Rey's teacher, Chewie’s friend, just a man, after all.

Luke almost crashed in again, but he heard Ben cry out over the rain.

“Don’t stop…fuck, don’t ever stop…Rey…Rey…I love you…”

The poor kid.

What the hell, let him have a few minutes of happiness; his life is a living hell.

It was raining, though, so Luke went and sat in his favorite cave.

To think.

***

“What was that?”

“Nothing, Ben. Who cares. Lie back down.”

Ben lay back down beside Rey.

“What if he comes back? Skywalker?”

“I’ll throw your big old boot at him. Can you be here, with me? In this moment?”

“So you can treasure it, forever?”

“No. So we can do it, again.”

“In that case? I’ll go look outside.”

***

Luke had decided to return, sternly, but the problem was that Kylo Ren was so very much Ben.

He saw him stick his head out the door, frowning, peering into the dark.

“All I see is rain. You’re jumping at shadows, Rey? Besides, what’s he going to do? Throw water on us? Tell us to stop fucking each other or he’ll call the authorities?”

“Can you feel his presence?”

“It’s his island. That old man’s been cock blocking me since I was a kid. Not this time. Back to work, Rebel Girl.”

Ben closed the door.

“…already, Ben?”

“…always ready for you…roll it over, killer, and get your ass in the air…”

“…missed you…after the war…”

“...never…won’t get out of bed for a year…”

Luke stopped listening.

They were going at it, again.

He went back to the cave.

To think some more.

***

“Thinking were you about what you missed, young Skywalker? About Anakin’s Kesshiri apprentice, maybe you thought?”

“That would be my personal business.”

Yoda laughed.

“Personal? Yes. Personal it might be, but see her again on this island you will not. Terrible you look. Just as well, might it be. In this cave, what are you doing in the rain?”

“They aren’t strangers, Master Yoda. My nephew and Rey. I heard Rey saying she kept his letters. They’ve known each other long enough to become lovers, and fall in love. I can’t tell her not to go and try to save the man she loves.”

“Found out, she did, that Kylo Ren and Ben Solo, the same man was he. Alone was she, and to her on Jakku, cruel men were. Though Ren he then was, betray her, forget her Ben Solo did not. Love each other they do. Deeply.”

“I failed him. He’s my nephew. I was there the day he was born. I love the little shit. But I couldn’t see good in him. And Rey? She’s…they’re in my hut, right now, and…I failed him. She’s stronger than I am.”

“Then her strength and love should you use. Save his soul, she might.”

***

Chewie was surprised to see Luke.

But he was glad the kid finally wanted to come down off the cloud and talk.

“So, guess what, Chewie? You can use the Force to minimize the distance in a long distance love affair. To less than a milimter.”

Chewie barked a question.

“Well, it’s not very Jedi Master of me, but I let them go. They’re young, and in love, and this may be the last chance they have to be together.”

Chewie disagreed.

“You just want them to have a happy ending. Han would have, too.”

Chewie shook his head, muttering something about rathtars, the Hutt syndicate, a double cross, and an Imperial blast vest.

Luke shook his head, like it had cobwebs in it.

“That’s what’s happened?”

Chewie nodded.

“When you play checkers with Ben Solo, he plays chess. It’s horrible. And ruthless. But very effective. If any of us live through this war? We'll have to do something about that. So, how is my former student the impossible Kesshiri half-blood, these days?”

Chewie began teasing Luke about Kalla.

“I gave up on all that a long time ago. I just wanted to know how she was.”

Chewie made a rather rude comment about Zarloshyya’s adopted daughter.

“Yeah, well, I think I’d feel a whole lot better than she would if I did, Chewie.”

They both laughed.

The two old friends talked until dawn.

***

In the morning, Luke was surprised to find Ben still there, asleep.

He didn’t look all that different than he had from the last time Luke had seen his nephew, sleeping.

Luke allowed himself to see Ben’s thoughts.

They were mostly about Rey.

And the future.

There was still darkness, but it was almost entirely balanced by the light.

And he saw part of the boy's plan.

Let last ship go. Can’t kill mother. Would only anger her if I tried. Kill Snoke. Stop his voice. Follow the rats that run. Destroy all the Sith as I go. Find the source. The King Rat. Kill it. Use the First Order, Snoke’s creation, to destroy the Sith. Destroy it all. Finish Grandfather's work. Bring balance to the Force, and complete my journey. My balance. No Jedi no Sith. Peace. New Path. Force United. Ben Solo, again.

Tears filled Luke’s eyes.

It wasn’t over.

What he knew would end.

But something new was beginning.

“Don’t you have some Imperial dirty work to do, Lord Ren?”

Ben opened one eye.

Rey screamed, grabbed the blanket off of both of them, and held it up to her neck.

“Master Luke, I can explain!”

Ben interrupted her.

“It’s self-explanatory, Rey. I’m naked. You’re naked, and we were under this blanket together.”

Ben grabbed his pants, stood up, and put them on.

“And you look terrible, Skywalker. You need to wash up. Change your robes. Clean up this dump. You’re going to have more company, today. Rey, I have to go. Kalla will come here, later today.”

He kissed her goodbye, and gathered up the rest of his clothes.

“You shattered my life, Master Luke. So, I’m about to return the favor. Long live the Revolution!”

“What revolution, Ben?”

“You’ll see. It begins now.”

He smirked, winked, and then he was gone.

It was crazy, but the very idea of Revolution made Luke smirk a little, himself.

***

Luke expected his former student, Kallaan Anglethorn, to leave with Rey, to go to meet her fate.

But the Mechanic let Rey fly the TIE fighter to her rendezvous with Kylo Ren. Ben Solo and destiny.

Kalla stayed behind.

Luke began to see what Ben meant.

“Orders from your boss, Kalla?”

“Yeah. Stay here. Keep you busy. Find your X-Wing and fix it.”

She never changed.

Other than the fact her coveralls with “K. Anglethorn” over the left chest pocket were from the First Order, it was still the same Kalla.

Long purple ponytails swinging around her hips, a cigarillo between her lips, and that look on her face that said “Fuck you, I know what I’m doing.”

“No. Kalla.”

“No, I can’t fix your X-Wing?”

“Yes, you can fix my X-Wing. No, I will not make love to you. What do you see in me, anyway?”

“I’ve never been sure. It’s just something about you. And you look a little rough, Master Luke, but I’ll bet you clean up, real good. You want some help?”

“No.”

“Are you past it, Master Luke? Because I could help you out with that, too.”

Luke felt the blood rising into his face.

“I’m a Jedi Master, I could raise every wreck in that ocean, if I wanted to, let alone raise my…that is, I have total control over my body. If I wished to make love to a woman, of course I could do it! That’s beside the point. I have chosen to leave the world and worldly things, behind.”

“Uh-huh. So you fucked up real bad and took it on your toes, and you've been hiding here ever since? That’s OK. You fell down, Luke. We all fall down. Time for you to get up, again.”

She winked at the pun.

“Watch this, Master Luke. One hand.”

The X-Wing rose from the ocean, and came to rest on the series of mats and tarps that Kallaan had laid down.

“Impressive.”

“Yeah, and I’m not even right-handed. You'd be surprised, the things I can do with my left hand.”

“You need to stop. Your behavior is highly inappropriate.”

“Yeah, and it’s only gonna get worse. I work for the bad guys. I don’t even hafta try to be good.”

“Fix the X-Wing, Kalla.”

*”*

Luke decided to bathe, and change his clothes, and tidy up his hut and it’s environs.

Maybe trim his beard a little.

If everyone was coming to his hermitage, he was going to have to make himself, and the place, a little more presentable.

***

The next time Luke saw the Mechanic, she appeared at the door of his hut, covered in grease, oil, sand and seaweed.

She looked tired.

“What is it about you Skywalkers and dramatic gestures of rejecting your past? And why am I always the one who has to clean up the mess? Anyway, your X-Wing is cleaned up and it’ll fly. But it’s not done, yet. Not to my standards. Tomorrow, I'll finish. You got any soap, Master Luke? Or a washtub? I don’t have a change of clothes.”

“I was just washing clothes, there’s still soap in the washtub. You can hang your coveralls on the line with my things. Soap is soap, here, so do the best you can.”

“You cleaned up well, Master Luke. So I’ll do my best.”

Kallaan wasn’t technically supposed to exist.

Her father, an Imperial mechanic from Tattoine named Kieran Anglethorn was crippled in the Battle of Endor fleeing the Death Star he had been working on.

He drank himself to death shortly before Kallaan was born.

Her mother, a Kesshiri barmaid at the Mos Eisley Cantina died giving birth to her daughter, a human-Kesshiri hybrid, a combination that he been thought reproductively impossible.

That left Kallaan in the care of her father’s business partner, a Wookiee named Zarloshyya, who had not gone to work for the Empire, and to this day still operated the same garage in Anchorhead.

Kalla’s hair was violet purple, and her eyes were violet-blue, but her skin was not purple, like a full Kesshiri, rather it had a faint exotic tinge of lavender to it.

And she always looked like she was wearing lipstick, because her lips were a naturally rosy pinkish lavender hue.

Kalla and Ben always looked comical, together, because she was a foot and change shorter than him, but she wasn’t what you might call a little girl.

She was raised by a Wookiee and as far as she was concerned, she was a Wookiee.

She could pick Ben up and throw him over her shoulders, and her strength was laid over in a body wide of hip, deep of bosom and, as his nephew had often observed?

“Look at that fine big ass. And the way the Wook swaggers when she walks? It’s like it’s talking to me. Get on me, flyboy, if you think you’re man enough.”

It was a good thing she was wearing coveralls.

Because Luke hadn’t seen any woman for over a decade, and now, two young women in one week, and one of them was the Mechanic, who had wanted to work on him since she was about 17?

But?

Things took a turn for the worse.

When Kallaan returned, her long purple hair was loose from its two long ponytails, and she was wearing a pair of women’s underwear that was something between panties and shorts and a olive drab A-line undershirt.

And it was obvious that Ben had not been lying.

Kallaan Anglethorn had three breasts.

Which was not a trait of humans or Kesshiri.

Not that Luke was complaining.

_Damned._

_I am damned._

_And she has three tits?_

_I am going to hell._

Two in the usual place roughly the size of a man's head, and one underneath the left that was a little smaller.

About the size of a big man’s fist.

She had a sleeping bag under her arm, which she unrolled on the floor, on the other side of the room from the nook where the Jedi’s master’s makeshift bed was.

“I smell food. When do we eat?”

She looked in the pot with a bark of dismay.

“This slop has no resemblance to food.”

Before Luke could protest she threw his food out to the porgs, and brought in raw fish, greens, some kind of potatoes.

The meal Kalla cooked had been the best one Luke had in years.

He used to eat like this, but, somehow?

He kept remembering what Ben and Rey had said.

About not feeling human.

About feeling like a weapon for a destiny you neither comprehended, or wanted.

Today, Ben Solo was changing all that.

The Resistance, the First Order, the Jedi, the Sith, Snoke?

They had all been playing checkers with a boy in a mask.

Having no idea they were playing chess with a man who had every move planned.

Even this one.

Today was the day that Ben fucking Solo was going to crush his enemies, and see them driven before him, to the tune of the lamentations of their kinsmen.

Today was also going to be the day that Luke Skywalker was going to rejoin the world of the living.

Not just as a Jedi.

As a man.

Long live the Revolution!

He waited for Kallaan to start crawling into her sleeping bag.

Looking disappointed, and probably mulling over whether she wanted to try a more direct approach, and /or assault on the citadel of her former Jedi Master’s virtue.

Said citadel was feeling like a mighty tower of strength, just now, and he hadn’t needed to use the Force to accomplish that.

Still a man, after all, Skywalker.

When he had told her she had to leave the Jedi Temple, she had smiled that crooked grin and said:

“You father finds you lack of faith disturbing.”

He owed her for that.

“Kalla, what you are wearing is unacceptable! Why doesn’t my nephew just have his name tattooed across the small of your back? Does the First Order have to put their insignia on everything? I saw quite a few pairs of Imperial panties, when I was a hotshot young flyboy, and the Empire did not put their emblem on the asses of their female employees. Or on their bras and undershirts. Take those off. Now.”

She looked shocked.

“Do I have to ask you, twice?”

“No, sir, Master Luke!”

The Mechanic took her underwear off in a big hurry.

Maybe I still am Luke Skywalker, Hotshot Flyboys, Hero of the Galaxy.

I sure feel like him, right now.

“That’s much better. Does my spoiled brat nephew ever tell you that you’re an exceptionally exotic and beautiful woman?”

“Not in those words.”

“Well, you are. He’s lucky to have you. And by all the stars that rule an old man’s fate? So am I. Now, come here.”

“Yes sir, Master Luke!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what happens in the next chapter, don't you, friends and neighbors! Well, you know some of what happens, at least. But I'll give you a hint. Long live the Revolution!


	4. LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Revolution will NOT be televised.

CHAPTER 4: LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!

“It’s time to let old things die. Snoke, Skywalker, the Sith, the Jedi, the Rebels; Let it all die. Rey... I want you to join me.”

“Ben, please. Don’t go this way.”

“This is my way. I have been going this way since the night my own uncle tried to kill me. Do you think all this has happened, by chance? Today is my day. A day of reckoning! Snoke thought I was a child. In a mask. What’s he thinking, now?”

Ben gestured towards Snoke's remains.

“Out there, on one of those little ships, and I know which one, is the most powerful living being in the Galaxy. My mother. I have only just begun to glimpse the distant starlight of the universes she has mastered. She thinks I’m a dumb kid, playing checkers, with the universe. But tonight, after I sweep all her pawns off the board? She’ll see she’s playing chess with a man worthy to be called her son. No one you know, or love is going to die, tonight. That’s not part of my plan.”

“I don’t…”

“But you do, understand, Rey. Tonight, my Uncle comes down from his ivory tower, the one he condemned me from. Tonight he becomes just a man, again. A man who lives in this world. No more hiding on an island, behind his religion and his hypocrisy. Tomorrow, he resumes his part of the journey.”

He ran to the door, making a sweeping gesture with his arm.

“And the First Order, who will call me Supreme Leader, when I claim victory over the Resistance, tomorrow? I will use them to destroy the Sith. The machine that devours itself. I have planned for this night. Every detail. This is my day. Not just the day of my victory, but the day of my liberation! I am no longer a weapon, in the hands of a destiny I don’t understand. Today, I am free. Today, I am a man.”

“And what am I, Ben? What am I, in all of…this?”

“You’re nobody, Rey. Your parents were filthy junk traders who sold you for drinking money. They’re in a pauper’s grave in the desert on Jakku. You have no part in this story. You are nothing. But not to me.”

You are nothing.

But not to me.

That was better than I love you.

It meant more to Rey.

“This is not the same old Empire versus Rebels shit, Rey! I am starting a revolution! Our revolution. I made a fire in your blood, didn’t I? A fire in your flesh? Well, I’ll make a fire in this Galaxy, one that burns as hot as I do! And that fire will burn until all the old things are ashes and dust. And when it’s out, people like you, and me and Kalla will no longer be pawns in the service of a destiny that robs us of our humanity, and our will. And for everyone else who isn’t Force sensitive? They’ll be free of war. Free of Empires and Rebellions recruiting them to go die for hokey religions and ancient weapons that are no match for a good blaster at your side. And all of us will walk the New Path, of the Force United. Where there are no Jedi, no Sith, no prophecy and no destiny. Only the Force and how you will you use it. As free men and women, of free will. The Old Order is Dead. Long Live the Revolution! Will you join me, Rey? Please?”

He reached his hand out to her, again.

Rey didn’t recognize herself, standing in the room full of dead men.

Many of whom she had killed.

Her heart pounding.

Her blood, singing.

And then there was Ben.

He had been poetry in motion.

What a piece of work is man.

The paragon of animals.

Snoke, and the Sith, perhaps some of these very men had trained Ben to be a ruthless warrior, a murder machine and he had used the skills that they had driven into him to slaughter them all.

When she had touched his thigh, Kylo Ren's blood sang to hers, it sang a joyful aria of blood and iron, of vengeance and justice.  
Of Revolution.

This was the moment he had been waiting for, and she was the one he chose to share it with.

And now?

He had shared his victory with her, a victory dictated by the ancient laws of blood and iron.

The laws of the ancient gods at the heart of time, the gods who had heard Ben’s voice, Kylo's voice, when he cried out in the darkness.

They had recognized he was a son of Fenrir, they who had given the days their names, and they had put the fire of dragons into Ben's soul, their hammer in Ben’s hand, and taught him their ancient laws, of a time when all brave men and women could fight to be free.

To crush one's enemies, and to see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their kinsmen.

The brute heart of a brute like him, and how it beat as one with the brute heart in Rey's own chest.

Come with me and we will fight and love and sing. We will be the iron fist that crushes oppression and injustice. For death and glory, for justice and revenge! We will fight until all the old things are dead, and everyone, no matter what side they took, is free.

It was an aria that Rey's blood had sung with him, in harmony, and she never wanted the song to end.

Because this was not just Kylo Ren offering her his hand.

It was Ben.

He wasn't just offering her his Revolution he was offering his love, his light, and his darkness.

How could she refuse one, without refusing the other.

Rey had never loved a man, so she never knew that this was the way love felt; maybe this was just the way love felt with her and Ben Solo, Kylo Ren.

She felt like a great saint, on fire with the inspiration of her gods, and like a great lover, on fire with the inspiration of her beloved.

Ben was offering her his hand. 

But he was also offering her the chance to change the Galaxy.

This time?

Rey took it.

“Yes, Ben. I will. The Old Order is Dead. Long Live the Revolution!”

General Hux came into the throne room, and Rey ignited her lightsaber.

“Rey! No. Hux is a friendly.” Ben told her.

“What happened? Solo, what have you done?” Hux demanded.

“What does it look like, Hux? This is the day. This is the hour.”

“The Ragnarok is begun?”

“By the hammer in my hand. I killed him. We killed all of them. And I let the Rebels destroy their last ship and this one to cover it all up. Look out there.”

Hux followed Ben's finger.

“There goes the Millennium Falcon. With what's left of the Resistance. All the people I didn’t want to kill. Where are they going? I don’t care. Why should I care where my mother and my godfather take my father’s ship to go and decide some more war games to play with me. That’s all this is, Hux. A game of thrones. And if you’re Force null? Or you're not a Skywalker? You don’t get to sit on the throne.”

“And now, the game is over, Solo. You have swept all the pieces off the board.” Hux observed.

Rey saw a look of horror and awe in Hux's face.

It was, she assumed, the same look she had on her face.

They stared at each other.

“I didn’t know you were a religious man, General.” Rey said.

“I am a soldier in the war that my gods have fought in a thousand galaxies for millenia.” Hux feverently replied.

“I have swept all the pieces off the board. Yes, I fucking well have! It’s the Revolution, Armi! A real goddamn revolution, and you get to be a real general and do something important! I have plans for your First Order. Big plans!”

“The Old Order is Dead! Long Live the Revolution!”

“Yes! But right now, I think you should go, and pack up your shit, and go get our cat, because we have to get the fuck out of here.”

“About that, Solo? I know I’m a mad dog, but I’m your mad dog, you bastard! Long before you met Rebel Girl, this was our Revolution! So, you might have told me you were staging a coup! How could you exclude me from your plans? There are no words for me to express how furious I am, right now!”

“This isn’t your end of things, Hux. And I didn’t tell anyone today was the day. Not even Rey. And I told you to leave the cat on my ship, didn’t I?”

“If you told me you were staging a fucking coup d’etat, I would have!” Hux shouted.

“You have a cat? You live together?” Rey interrupted.

“Yes. Hating each other is the basis of our friendship. Solo and I share a common room and a bathroom. It’s convenient. We have a cat, and a mistress, in common. And I have been the roommate of this evil genius since my father sent me to the Jedi Temple.” Hux replied.

“And then we burned it down.”

“We burn everything down.”

Both men laughed.

“Wait. Stop right there. I would ask you if you and the General were just friends, Ben, but you and Kalla are just friends. So, do you sleep with Hux, too? I mean, what have I gotten myself into?”

“Why do women always ask us this?” Hux insisted.

“Probably for the same reason I asked Kalla and Rey if they wanted to take off their tops and kiss and they both smacked me.”

“Probably. No, Miss Rey, Solo and I do not sleep together, and we also do not want to take off our shirts, and kiss.”

Rey was blushing.

“OK. I’m done interrupting.”

“However, if it was your desire that Kylo Ren and I made you an Imperial sandwich? That can be arranged.”

Rey blushed even redder 

“You’re walking on thin ice, Hux.” Kylo Ren warned.

“That and I’m not as dumb as you think, Solo. I knew you were up to something. I brought my things, and Millicent. And as the ship is compromised, can I continue flirting with Rebel Girl, and hear the rest of your fascinating villain speech in your TIE Fighter?”

“Fuck you, Hux. I really hate you, you ginger son of a bitch.”

“Fuck you, Solo. You’re nothing but a cheap fucking pirate. I loathe the sight of you.”

Rey was glad they laughed again, congratulating each other and embracing like brothers.

For a moment?

She wasn’t sure if they were going to fight.

“Stop flirting with Rey. I mean it.”

“Alright. I will. For now. But, Kylo?”

“What, Armi?”

“Haven’t you forgotten something?”

Rey had no idea why General Hux gestured towards her, and then the throne.

“You don’t think I thought of that? I can’t. It’s a mess.”

“Pull down the curtains. Drape them over it. Force push the body away. You'll never forgive yourself, if you don’t. She won’t, either.”

“You’re probably right. Twenty minutes. Get Millicent onto the TIE fighter. Get us ready to go. Buckled up, and engines on.”

“Yes sir, Supreme Leader.”

The General clicked his heels, nodded sharply, and left the throne room.

Rey watched Ben Force push the lower half of Snoke away, and use a dead Guard's cape to clean off the throne, then tear down the curtains, and drape them over it.

He took off his gloves, and sat on the throne.

“I think I’m taking this with me. I can get used to this.”

Then, Kylo patted his leather-clad thighs with his hands.

“It’s good to be the King. Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. Come here, Rey. Sit in my lap. You won. You turned me, and we killed the bad guys. So? To the victor goes the spoils. I’m all yours.”

“We can’t. I admit, I want to, but it would just be…so…wrong.”

“Yes, it would. That’s why I want to do it. Come on, now, didn’t you suffer through a lot of cheap thrills with a lot of two bit flyboys and rogues for this moment? It wasn’t just loyalty that kept you from running away when I told you I was Kylo Ren. And now? I am Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren. Dizzy with success. Drunk with power. And hard as Beskar steel. Come, my young apprentice. Time for your first steps on the New Path.”

“How will this help me strike a balance within the Force, in myself?”

“You’ve got a dark side, Rey. I need your light, but you still thirst for my darkness, Rebel Girl. Come to me. Drink your fill.”

Kylo Ren held out his hand to her.

Rey shuddered.

She was in the lair of the Great Beast, and he sat on his throne of Blood and Iron in his kingdom of fire.

Now, he was calling her to her fate.

And she went.

“You’re a monster, Ben.”

Rey said, as both men lifted her onto their throne.

And she sat astride his lap.

He was hard as Beskar steel, he was so hard, and she could already feel the fires of hell as Kylo Ren took off his gloves.

“I know.” He whispered.

The monster put his hands on her bloody, smoky, sooty clothes, and tore them from her body.

She sat, naked against his black leather skin, and with her own hands she released his dagger from it’s second skin, and gladly fell on it.

Holding her close against his broad chest, the monster had her, his hands caressing her straining, sweating body as she burned in the hot, bright, red flame of his dragon fire.

And it was fucking glorious.

“Give me your darkness, monster! Your fire, and your love and your lust! My beast, my Great Beast, I love you, oh, I love you so much!” Rey cried.

“I am in your light, Rebel Girl! Your light is all around me and I can see stars, and stars, and stars! You are everything, everything to me!”  
They said other things to each other, then, laughing and moaning and screaming out their victorious, ferocious lust.

Rey didn’t want to escape from his lair, not ever, not ever after.

If the Prince shows up?

Tell him I’m busy.

  
***  
Just as the hangar was falling in, Ben Solo ran through the hangar, at full tilt boogie, carrying Rey across his shoulders.

"By the Gods, Solo, how hard did you put it to the poor woman?"

"Rey's fine. I can run faster than she can."

He put her down, and she climbed into the TIE fighter, and Hux put the cat on his lap so Rey could sit down.

She was wearing a pair of the Mechanic's coveralls.

Ben threw himself into the pilot's seat, jammed his helmet on, strapped in and punched it.

He took off, accelerated at a 90 degree angle and did a barrel roll to avoid an enormous fireball, all at once.

Rey really thought they were going to die, but Ben was a good pilot.

Better, she thought, than she ever realised.

He got on the radio.

“This is Ben Solo, calling the Millennium Falcon. You got me, Chewie?”

A familiar bark came over the radio.

“Snoke’s dead, and I just flew out of the fireball that used to be his ship by the balls of my ass. If all you Rebels like breathing, you better haul ass. Don’t shoot me, I'm right beside you.”

Rey turned.

They were right beside the Falcon.

She could see Chewbacca.

He waved.

Poe Dameron was flying.

General Organa-Solo stared at them in disbelief.

Ben waved at her, and flashed the thumbs up.

“Hi Mom! Hey, Poe, don’t fuck up my father’s ship, you two bit pirate! Time to fly or fry!"

“You think you can outfly me in that Imperial piece of shit, Solo?”

“Dameron, I can out drink, out fuck, and out fly you any time!”

“Fifty says I make lightspeed before you do.”

“Make it a hundred and you’re on.”

Ben was actually flying circles around the Falcon.

Building up momentum like a slingshot.

They were upside down as he tore out from under the Falcon, and made the jump with a Wookiee bray of triumph.

  
***

Chewbacca shouted at Poe, angrily.

“Chewie, I can’t understand you when you shout!”

“He pretty much said that you’re a fucking idiot, you made the Falcon look bad, and he’d rather have porgs flying Han's and his ship than you.” General Organa-Solo told him.

Chewie pointed at the empty space where Vader's former TIE Fighter had just been, and kept shouting.

"You call yourself a pilot, don't make him laugh, now his godson Kallaurra, he's a pilot, he ought to pull your arms off, don't talk to him, just make the jump." Leia continued.

"I'm sorry, Chewie, but Ben is nuts. One time, he was blowing out of Anchorhead with the local fuzz on his tail, and he did that straight up accelerating and a full barrel roll in the goddamn Starkiller. Which is just as big as the Falcon. Nobody flies like Ben.With Han gone? Nobody in the Galaxy can outfly that crazy fucker Ben Solo. Oh, sorry, General.”

“For what? Ben is crazy."

Chewie apologized to Poe for shouting.

"Chewie, did Ben wave to me, and yell “Hi, Mom!”

Chewie nodded.

“He's done it. Started a Revolution. And he's wiped all the pieces right off the board. In one night, that crazy fucker has sent the Resistance back to Yavin with it's tail between it's legs, and on a private freighter that is his own property! And he's decapitated the First Order, and taken power for himself, so he can use it for his own ends! He's positioned all the power in the Galaxy so it's in the hands of one family, his! And he's showed me I'm not dealing with a kid in a Darth Vader costume, I'm facing a man, and a Skywalker who is every bit Anakin's heir, and Vader's and mine! In one fucking night! Then Ben flies by to say hi and do a fucking victory lap around me? By now, everyone in the Resistance who Kylo Ren hasn't killed knows that was Ben Solo taking a victory lap after he killed the Badguy and Saved the Day, and we'd all be dead without him. And the worst part is? It's all true. And all part of the plan I thought was crazy. Until it worked! The next time I see that kid of mine, I am going to slap him right in the mouth!” Leia fumed.

Chewie put his two cents in.

"Of course I'm proud of him, too. Cocky little bastard. He may be a Skywalker from the neck up, who says my father is his idol, but m you want the truth? Ben is just like his father. He's a Solo all the way down to the ground."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Ben, you crazy kid! What will you do next? Spread the word throughout the Galaxy? Play both ends against the middle, and make things difficult for General Organa-Solo, and for Rey? Probably.


	5. THE RISE OF BEN SOLO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kylo Ren lays a trap for an old enemy, and starts doing the dirty work for himself and Ben Solo. Also in which Ben Solo drunk calls his mother, recruits for the Resistance, and gives birth to a revolution.

** CHAPTER 5: THE RISE OF BEN SOLO. **

Rey watched the TIE Fighter carrying Ben, Hux and Kalla leaving Ahch-To.

Master Luke smiled, shaking his head.

“Are you ready to go, Rey?”

“My head feels like it’s full of bees, Master Luke. Something’s changed. I feel it, in the Force, even. A great shift. And I killed five or six men. They were filthy Sith space hogs, but they were men! And I can’t tell you what I did after that! What happened?”

“We all underestimated Ben Solo. That’s a mistake I won’t make again. He’s a Skywalker, after all. After you, Rey.”

“I can’t fly your X-Wing, Master Luke!”

“Yes you can. I hear you’re a great pilot. And you know where the Rebel Base is.”

“Master Luke, did we just let the bad guys win?”

“I hope not.”

***

That night, the Supreme Leader decided to call his mother.

“Get out, all of you. Not you, Luke. Rey, you stay, too. Chewie, too.”

Leia waited until it was just family.

She answered the call on her channel.

“Mom? It’s, uh, it’s Ben. I didn’t blow you up. But I blew up the guy who blew you up. Are you OK, now? How can you use the Force to fly through space? Or to survive space? What was space like?”

“Space was freezing and stifling. I'll show you how to use the Force to bend the law of conservation of matter when you stop being Kylo Ren and come home. I’m fine, now. And you sound like you’re drunk.”

“I am. But I’m happy. He’s gone. That fucking bastard, Snoke. And the fire is lit. The Revolution has begun! My mind is my own. About the Old Man?”

“Luke told me. What about you? Are you coming home now? Is that your revolution.”

“You'll see.’

“Is there another Sith?"

“You know there is.”

"Do you think it's who I think it is?"

"I hope not. Or his legions."

“Come back, Ben. We can fight them, together.”

“I can’t. Not entirely. But, I can talk to you, now. No one can stop me. And no one’s in my mind. I’m thinking about getting married. On Tattoine. I can marry Rey and Kalla, legally, there. Don’t tell Rey. I haven’t asked her yet. I haven’t asked either of them. But I feel like I’m a man, now, and I’m ready to settle down.”

“With just two women.”

Ben missed the sarcasm in his mother's voice

“Yeah, it’s a big step for me. But I’m ready for it. I have to say goodbye to the others, though. But I'll be in every port, for this last part of my journey, so…do you think Rey would marry a guy like me?”

“She loves you.”

“Yeah, but she hardly knows me. I’m such an asshole. I’m a weird guy, too. And moody. And funny-looking. My ears are too big. My nose is too big. My whole head is too big. And when I smile I look goofy. Kalla is just used to me. But I’ll bet she’s thinking about my goddamn Uncle, right now.”

Ben dropped his bottle.

Then he picked it up and drank from it.

“I mean, Uncle Luke is sixty, and he’s still better looking than me. What if Kalla leaves me for Uncle Luke? Did Rey meet that rat bastard pirate son of a bitch Poe Dameron? He still owes me money. I’ll bet she did. I’m doomed, Mom. They’re both going to leave me.”

Ben started to cry.

“Ben, you are not weird, or funny looking. I think you've grown up to be a handsome man. You are moody, but it’s not so bad. Kalla has loved you all your lives. And I think Rey just about worships you. No one’s going to leave you, Ben.”

Then he was quiet.

"Ben?"

He started snoring.

"BEN!"

“Huh? Shit. What did I say, Mom? Oh yeah. It was the rathtars. We had a fucking deal. I gave the Old Man a Captain’s Medal. Told him to stay along the Outer Rim. And he agreed to stay out of my Imperial entaglements. And then? There he was, at Starkiller Base! And where were my rathtars that were supposed to go to Jobi the Hutt? That's one of the reasons Ben Solo can't show his face, too much. It'll end up of Jobi the Hutt's wall, in a slab of carbonite. It's his own fault. He can...he can hang around until the war is over. All he had to do was stick to our deal. And not come running after me, like I was a bad boy, so Daddy had to come and take me home to Mommy. It's fucking insulting, you know? I knew what I was doing. I had a plan. The Old Man did it to himself."

They heard the bottle clink.

“Oh yeah. Politics. So, here’s what Ben Solo is going to do. I’m going to recruit you a new army. Take a year or two to train them. Kylo Ren will need that long to find out who his Sith rivals are protecting, and start interrupting their plans with the usual. Terrorist attacks. Guerilla warfare. Black bag stuff. The Dirty Work. At least he'll be doing it for us, and not for Snoke, this time."

“And what will my new army do, Ben?”

“We'll talk about that when the time comes. Trust me, you’ll know the last battle, when you see it. Empty. WOOK! KALLA! Bring me another jug of wine, this one is empty.”

There was a crash, Ben began swearing, and then they heard the door opening and shutting.

“I didn’t break it.”

“I noticed. OK, boss, time to take a shower and go to bed. Come on, boss.”

“The radio, Kalla.”

“Yeah, hello? Kylo has to go, now. The bottle is empty. You listen, sister. This is the Mechanic. You tell anyone the Supreme Leader was crying to you, and I’ll give you something to cry about.”

Kallaan thought she had shut off the radio, but she hadn’t.

There was a strange sound, and Ben laughing.

SMACK!

“Owww!” he complained

“That bottle ain’t going there, Sugar Tits.” Kallaan told Ben.

Ben laughed, again, drunkenly.

“What about my nose?”

“It’s big enough. Can you stand up?”

“No. But he can.”

“Yeah, I see that. Quit grinning at me, you horny motherfucker. I’ll unzip your pants, and fuck you right here.”

“Go ahead. Just try not to bang my head off the wall, you brute.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m going to bang your head off the wall so hard, you won’t know if you’re having an orgasm or an aneurysm.”

They both laughed, Kalla checked the radio and off it went.

Chewie laughed.

“That is my weird, goofy kid, right? And his equally weird and goofy best friend? The kids who used to call each other brother and sister, and continued to even after they discovered each other’s genitals, when they were about 13? How can this be the same man who, just yesterday, pulled off the coup that changed the Galaxy? Yesterday, Ben was a visionary genius, starting a revolution. This morning he was announcing that he’s now Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader, and that the Resistance is vanquished. And tonight? Am I contacted by that man? Threatening me? Asking for terms? Or from a revolutionary, laying out his plan, one rebel to another? No. I get a call from my weird, goofy son. The same shameless kid I used to have to tell how I was not picking up used rubbers off the floor of his bedroom! And he’s asking me what space was like! Meanwhile, drinking a whole jug of wine. Then he’s talking about getting married. And, of course, he’s too drunk to stand, but sober enough to entertain Kalla. He’s just like his father.” Leia sighed.

She turned to Rey.

“That’s what you’re ending up with, kiddo. When you get Ben Solo? It’ll be months looking at the sky, wondering who he’s using his lightsaber on, both of them, and then him coming home with a pile of dirty clothes to lie on his ass for another few months until it’s time to blast off again. And his moods? What if he wants to come home to Coruscant? And he bought the building, so I won’t be able to kick him out of the flat! Why did I marry Han Solo? Why didn’t I get my implant checked, regularly? Why didn’t I just stay in space?”

She noticed that Rey had a distant, happy look on her face.

Probably thinking about Ben.

But Luke had the same look on his face, except he was smiling like the cat who ate the canary.

“Luke, please don’t tell me you fucked the Wookiee!” She snapped.

“She’s not actually a Wookiee, Leia.” Luke retorted.

Chewie was laughing, again.

Rey snorted, and then she chuckled, and she couldn’t help it, she burst into a fit of laughter.

“Boy, does Ben have you all snowed! Not me. I know what that call meant. It meant, Mom, I’m still your goofy kid, but I remain Ben Solo and Kylo Ren. We either work together, or destroy each other. And it’s up to me to choose which one. So if I were you guys? I’d quit fucking laughing it up.”

***

And then?

Ben Solo started his revolution.

It spread like wildfire across the wilds of the Outer Rim, and he only had to make one small spark.

It started in what was intended to look like a drunken rant on a hot night at the Mos Eisley Cantina.

Just Ben Solo in a foul mood, taking his shirt off on a hot night when the cooling wasn’t working right.

Suddenly, he rose up off the barstool with a roar.

He shoved a few creatures out of the way, and lifted some poor fool in a First Order uniform off of his barstool, tossed him on the ground, and then Ben threw himself on the man, beating him with his heavy fists until someone got Zarloshyya to pull him away from the man.

“Get up, you son of a bitch! Get up and run out, you Sith-serving cocksucker, before I beat you to death! Don’t ever come back!”

Ben struggled against Zarlo, roaring, bellowing like an angry Wookiee.

After the man had crawled out the door, Zarlo let Ben go.

“I’m getting tired of those sons of Hutt-sucking whores, these goddamn Imperial bastards! Tired of war! My parents made me in desperation in a battle tent, and no one was glad to see me born! The day I was born, my father was fighting in the stars, my grandfather was hardly cold, and my mother was fighting again while I screamed for her in my cradle! Sixty years of war, and for what? The Force, to put it in balance? That’s a laugh! Have any of you seen the stars die? The planets stop turning? Don’t those two suns come up every morning? Like they did when the Jedi bought my grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, out of slavery. Like the day my uncle, Luke Skywalker left this cantina with my father, Han Solo. Like the sun’s came up, today. That means the Force is in balance. Always has been. Always will be, until the end of time. It’s all of us who are out of balance. Worthless bastards and fucking sons of bitches, all of us, on every planet. Drink and the Devil has done for the rest! But if I see one of those Imperial cunts in here again? I’ll beat him to death.”

Ben sat back on his barstool.

“Another pitcher.”

Eventually, somebody asked.

“Did the Imperials put those scars on you, Ben? The ones you don’t talk about?”

“They had me prisoner on one of their ships for those three years you didn’t see me. No sooner did I escape Jedi school than did they take me, and try to make me into a Sith. I was beaten, starved, tortured, and made to fight other prisoners to the death. That hellbound bastard Kylo Ren, a man I once called my friend? He killed my father. I’m sick and tired of all of it. The endless wars. The Jedi and the Sith. The Dark and the Light. The Rebels and the Empire. The Resistance and the First Order. It’s time for all of it to go. After I do my part to kill every Sith and all their lackeys, servants and toadies? After this war is over? I’m done with it. All of it. I say the Force is United. The only sides are the ones we made up, to fight each other over. And the path to the Force? It's for anybody. Everybody. The Force can’t be bad or good. It’s us who are. So let’s make it simple. A new path. To the Force United. After the death of the Sith? And the end of this war? Let it go. Let it end.”

Ben Solo raised the pitcher to his mouth.

“Drink and the Devil has done for the rest. And when you see a Sith's servant and kill it, male or female? I’ll buy you a drink. But if any of you kills Kylo Ren? I’ll kill you like a rat in the street, and the last thing you’ll hear is your woman screaming my name for joy. Kylo Ren killed my father, and he wants my women. Both of 'em. So his throat is mine to cut. He’s not worth a lightsaber. I’ll kill him with brute force, that's the force I’ll use.”

There was one swallow left in Ben’s pitcher of beer.

He stood up, took the last swallow, and threw the pitcher on the ground.

“For every scar on my body, a hundred Sith will die. The Outer Rim hasn’t been in this war, yet. Well, go to the Resistance, and tell them Ben Solo sent you to kill every Imperial till they tear those patches off their chests and throw down their blasters. But unless the Resistance promises to let the past go? Don’t show them your steel. As for me? Ben Solo is going to war. Drink, and the Devil has done for the rest.”

Ben grabbed his vest and shirt.

The First Order man still lay in the doorway.

Dying.

Ben picked him up.

“My Lord Ren…Long live the Revolution.” the man quietly croaked.

Ben spoke close to his ear.

“It won’t be long, now, my brother. When you follow the New Path to the halls of our fathers, Lord Vader himself will greet you. Long live the Revolution. May the Force be with you.”

Ben broke the dying man's neck with a quick twist of his mighty hands.

He let the body fall into the sand.

That, he vowed, would be the last innocent being he ever killed.

“Burn him. On a high pyre. He was a brave man.” he declared.

And Ben Solo loped off into the night.

Singing an old song, that old pirates like him had sung, for millennia.

“Fifteen men on a dead man's chest. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the Devil has done for the rest…”

***

“…got no more time for technique. I’ll just shove my lightsaber down her throat. What do you think, my Mechanic?”

“Why not, boss. That’s probably what he used to do.”

The black-robed man on the ground to which the Mechanic referred wasn’t going to get any deader.

They had started cutting with his feet, at the ankles, and the Mechanic had got all the way to his legs at mid-thigh before he died.

Kylo Ren's red lightsaber glowed in the frightened Sith apprentice's face.

“Why? You are one of us?”

“That’s just it, darling. I didn’t kill Supreme Leader Snoke and his Praetorian Guard just to be one of many. I am the Master, now. All other masters must die.”

The apprentice grabbed hold of Kylo Ren’s leg, and threw herself over his feet.

“Mercy, my Master, have mercy on me! I will serve you. I have no desire for power, I am no master and never will be.”

She begged for her life in the language of the Sith, and turned her frightened, tear-stained face up to the impressionless black mask.

“I'll do anything.” She told him.

“Yes. Women often do, for me. But I don’t need cunt from you. I need information. Tell me where your friends who are loyal to Snoke are. Where these fools are who presume to use the title of Master while I live and breathe. Will you talk?”

Kylo Ren asked in the language of the Sith, speaking only one word in Basic.

“Yes, my Lord Ren. Supreme Leader.”

“Good.”

He summoned his command.

“TK0515, put binders on this one, and keep an eye on her. If she does anything suspicious? Beat her like the old Imperials beat us during training.”

“Yes, sir.”

***

“General Pryde, I would like to see you alone, in the conference room. When it is convenient.”

“It is always convenient for me to obey your orders, Lord Ren.”

Pryde returned to his quarters to make sure his uniform was spotless, and adjusted his cap.

For a moment he nearly laughed at himself, a sad old queen making himself beautiful for the man he'd briefly loved, as a boy, back when he had the power over him.

The boy had never really wanted his attentions, but then he had not been in a position to refuse.

Still, he had not been vicious or brutal with the young would-be Sith as his colleagues had been.

For one, he had no desire to harm a beautiful boy, or to see him harmed, and for another he understood the subtle difference between seduction and rape.

It was General Pryde who came with the clean clothes and fresh blankets. The basin, and the soap and water and the towels. General Pryde who ordered that only droids clean the cell, General Pryde who helped the broken young man back to his cot, who sat with him and stroked his freshly-washed hair and dried his tears. General Pryde who nursed him and brought his meals and ordered days off his training.

And it was General Pryde who understood that the boy had needs of his own, needs that the General would satisfy, to show the lad that the love men made to each other was not of necessity brutal and painful and violent.

Even if it wasn’t what the boy wanted, and he had no ability to give or refuse his consent.

Young Ben had begun to rely on the visits paid to him by his superior; perhaps even to look forward to them.

Of course, the lad would still weep a little, after, but General Pryde would stay to dry his tears, and tell him what a handsome young man he was, and how he was just a little in love with him. Then he would tell the boy that soon he would be free, and back in the arms of his three-breasted Mechanic soon enough, and then they could scheme a way to make all the men who had hurt him pay for it.

In turn, once the boy had come to power and earned his Sith dagger, he had used it on the men who had so cruelly used him, but he killed without cruelty, and in rage.

He wanted only their blood; their tears were not necessary.

It was with a heavy heart that Pryde went to Kylo Ren; because the beautiful boy had become a strong, handsome man, but he was still interested only in the charms of women.

And if he ever did have the occasion to desire the pleasures the man who trained him had introduced him to?

He had his ginger-mad dog close by.

Once he had asked the Mechanic if Hux and Ren ever indulged in a little harmless fun, and she had sighed, wistfully.

“If they do? I never get invited. Wouldn’t that make me the happiest woman in the Galaxy, General, sir? The only think I can think of that’s more shit hot than two men in black leather who want to fuck your brains out is two men in black leather who want to fuck each other’s brains out while they’re fucking you.”

“True, Anglethorn. Very true.” He had agreed.

Taking care to appear shipshape one more time, Pryde entered the conference room.

Lord Ren sat at the head of the table.

General Pryde sat at the other.

With a wave of his hand, the Supreme Leader secured the room from entry and prying ears, engaging all possible security measures.

He removed his mask.

“Sit closer to me, Enric. I’m losing my voice. I’ve spent most of the day screaming at one of the stupidest women I’ve ever met."

There was something in his Lord’s manner that was almost flirtatious.

Kylo Ren always made General Pryde feel as if he was close to making a pass at him when they had these little confidences.

It flattered the older man that in some way the younger man remembered they had once been lovers.

Or something like it.

“Did she have anything useful to tell you, Lord Ren?”

“Yes. But she seemed to think it was a seduction, not an interrogation. Which brought back memories I’d rather not think on.”

The Supreme Leader stood up in a swirl of black and went to the window.

“They are as numerous as rats, and just about as loyal to each other. And as long as one of them lives, I am not secure in my power. This is my Galaxy, Enric. I paid for in with my blood and my sweat. And my tears. You, above all men, know that. I am Lord Vader’s heir. How dare they swear their allegiance to any man but me?”

General Pryde also went to the window.

“We will destroy those of your faith who do not swear fealty to you. As we crushed the Resistance, we will crush this enemy, within.”

“An enemy within is more dangerous than an enemy without. I have wasted a day I didn’t have to waste. Have that woman executed before I get up in the morning, General Pryde.”

“I will take care of it, personally, Supreme Leader.”

“Good.”

They both looked out the window.

“The stars belong to me, Enric. They have since the day I was born. I have faith in them, and they have never failed me. They are cold, and they are distant. But they are mine. Like you.”

Pryde turned from the window.

The smile on Lord Ren's face was savage and malevolent.

“I served your grandfather when I was a young man, Supreme Leader. Now, I serve you.” He replied.

Lord Ren looked back at the stars, and General Pryde had an execution to carry out.

Secure in his knowledge that his hold over the young man was absolute.

***

The ranks of the depleted Resistance swelled over the next three months.

The tattooed shock troops of the Arkanian wolf clans, bristling with weapons and battle armor, wearing the skins of wolves and bears.

Desert rats and lean, hard con men and smugglers from Tattoine.

Ordinary people from all over the Galaxy.

And Ben Solo did not announce his arrival at the Rebel Base

He landed in a sleek custom YT-2400 freighter called the _Hellfire,_ raven-black, the only color on her the blood-red and Beaskar chrome trim.

She was a beautiful ship, and they had custom-made her, to Ben Solo's specification in the Corellian shipyards, taking extra care and trouble for Han Solo's son.

Ben supervised a bunch of droids unloading perhaps two tons of food, clothes and medical supplies from the _Hellfire._

And crate after crate of ammunition and weapons.

Before the multitudes arrived, he supplied the Arkanians with contraband. Booze, cigarillos, and rubbers, telling them to give the stuff away to the enlisted people and volunteers and triple charge the officers.

Ben seemed surprised that people were waiting for him to talk.

General Organa-Solo and Rey were at the front of the crowd.

He climbed up so he was standing behind the hooded plasma cannon turret of his ship.

He opened the black hood, with its red and chrome trim, so he was standing behind the cannon.

“It’s time to let old things die. It’s time to let the past die. To kill it, if you have to. It’s the only way for us to become the people we were meant to be. The only way to save our Galaxy from an endless cycle of war, violence, death and destruction. It’s time to make a fire in this Galaxy, one that burns as hot as our desire for freedom! And that fire will burn until all the old things are ashes and dust. And when it’s out, people like me, and Rey, and everyone who is strong in the Force will no longer be pawns in the service of a destiny that robs us of our humanity, and our will. And for everyone else who isn’t Force sensitive? We all be free of war. Free of Empires and Rebellions recruiting them to go die for hokey religions and ancient weapons that are no match for a good blaster at your side. And all of us will walk the New Path, of the Force United. Where there are no Jedi, no Sith, no prophecy and no destiny. Only the Force and how you will you use it. As free men and women, of free will. The Old Order is Dead. Long Live the Revolution!”

The whole crowd rose in a great cheer.

“Long live the day I come to you in this ship, hot and smoking from battle, and lay Kylo Ren's helmet at my mother’s feet! And I promise you this! For every scar on my body, a hundred Sith will die!” he continued.

The cheer grew even louder.

“I'll be damned. The little shit was listening, all these years.” Leia said to Rey.

She approached the ship, and the crowd and Ben lifted her onto it.

Ben made room for his mother to stand with him.

“First I want to thank my son for supporting us with supplies and not just words. We all have a lot of work ahead of us. Planning. Training. Rebuilding. But the Resistance has been about Revolution, and defeating the Sith all along. You all know me. I don’t like labels, and I don’t follow rules. I believe we need to do what it takes to get the job done. So, today, I stand before you, with my son, Ben Solo, and you know what I say?”

Leia took Ben's hand and lifted their arms in the air.

“The Old Order is Dead. The Resistance Lives! Long Live the Revolution!”

She fired the plasma cannon into the air.

The roar of the crowd was deafening.

Leia turned to Ben as they dropped their hands and the crowd dispersed.

“Don’t try and fuck with me, kiddo. This is not Mommy's first time at the rodeo.” She told him.

“I know. So, truce? For now?”

“You don’t move on me, and I won’t move on you. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Then truce. For now. Soon, we'll have to meet. And discuss particulars. As in before the end of the month. Yes?"

"Of course."

"Will your alter ego also be at the table? I need to know what he's up to."

"You don't want to know."

"Yes I do. If he's not going to come to the meet, I'm not having one."

"Agreed. But you won't be hearing much from him."

"We'll see."

The two most powerful warlords in the Galaxy shook hands, and then Ben got down off the ship, and helped his mother down.

Shortly after, he unsheathed his lightsaber and cut all the droids to pieces.

It had a crossbar, like Kylo Ren's. 

Several of them begged or screamed.

The gesture shocked the milling crowd.

Ben smirked, still holding the purple lightsaber aloft.

“Dead men tell no tales.” He said.

A rough laughed rumbled through the new members.

And the veterans understood that Ben Solo didn’t mean to make his revolution on words, alone.

Rey suddenly realised Ben was right.

It was a game of thrones between Skywalkers.

And if you weren’t a Skywalker?

You didn’t get to sit on the throne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They say all's fair in love and war, but it seems to me like Ben and Kylo are cheating. But what else can you expect from a pirate and a warlord? In the next chapter, we find out if Ben really will let Rey fly the Hellfire, and if she will decide to meet with Kylo in secret, because meeting with Ben in public just isn't good enough.


End file.
